Your Email:

Friend's Email:

Note: (optional)

Subject:

Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/18203/full/18203/survivors-unlikely-liberators-to-meet-at-s-f-exhibit/ <br /><br /> <b>Survivors, ‘Unlikely Liberators’ to meet at S.F. exhibit</b> <br /> Friday, August 2, 2002 | by <p>ALEZA GOLDSMITH </p> <br /><br /><p>When Eric Saul first heard of it he didn't believe his ears.<br /><br /> Jews liberated from the Holocaust by Japanese Americans? Unlikely story.<br /><br /> Then a former Japanese-American 522nd Field Artillery Battalion soldier showed him the photographs he took on the scene of a death march at Waachkirchen, a town near the Austrian border on May 2, 1945. And Saul, a museum curator, suddenly believed.<br /><br /> His surprise didn't stop there. As it turns out, said Saul, "by supreme irony," the African-American 761st U.S. Tank Battalion also "happened to be there."<br /><br /> The two segregated units—both made up of soldiers who had endured harsh discrimination and questions of patriotism back home—were not serving together. They just coincidentally crossed paths.<br /><br /> "Together," said Saul, "they helped save thousands of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis."<br /><br /> Saul's exhibition of photos and interviews, called "Unlikely Liberators," celebrates these "three oppressed minority groups, who met on this day in this little town between Germany and Austria."<br /><br /> Survivors and liberators of the Dachau death march will be honored Wednesday evening at the exhibit at the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society, Fort Mason Center.<br /><br /> The show, which is also sponsored by the Holocaust Center of Northern California and the Japanese American Historical Society, is on display through Sept. 29.<br /><br /> "It's quite powerful," said Saul of the photos, many of which were taken by the soldiers themselves, and the interviews, which provide a unique perspective on the Holocaust by minority liberators.<br /><br /> "You couldn't make this stuff up if you were writing a novel."<br /><br /> Many of the Japanese soldiers' families, for instance, had themselves been interned in camps in America following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The African-Americans, who "always felt they had it really bad," discovered that "racism was a worldwide problem—it really widened their perspective," said Saul.<br /><br /> A small group of these survivors and soldiers from both battalions will be reunited, many for the first time in 57 years, at Wednesday's opening reception.<br /><br /> The reunion will include San Francisco resident Floyd Dade, an African-American soldier in the 761st U.S. Tank Battalion.<br /><br /> Although the liberation was just one of 183 days straight of fighting in six different countries, Dade still remembers the looks of death and the shaved heads of the survivors as well as a distinctive stench.<br /><br /> "It was sad, but those people had courage," he said of the survivors.<br /><br /> Dade often speaks about his experience in the battalion at synagogues and schools. He emphasizes that as an African-American, "I couldn't even vote, but I could fight for the freedoms we didn't have."<br /><br /> Once, after speaking to a crowd in Los Angeles, Dade said a survivor approached him, saying "he remembered seeing some black tankers roll by while he was on a death march." At the time the other survivors on the death march told him he was crazy and out of his mind so he forgot about it, until meeting Dade.<br /><br /> "We laugh about it now."<br /><br /> Remembering is the whole point behind the exhibition, said Saul, whose personal interest in minority history has led him to create many exhibitions of this sort. His "Visas for Life" exhibit, for instance, features non-Jewish dignitaries who helped Jews escape Nazi persecution by issuing unapproved visas.<br /><br /> Not only does Saul hope those who attend "Unlikely Liberators" will remember to "never let the Holocaust happen again," but he also hopes they'll remember that "just because something's not in the history books doesn't mean it didn't happen. Millions of little footnotes won't make the history books. It's a shame that unless we really go out of our way to tell the stories, how easily they can be forgotten."<br /><br /> When the show closes in September, Saul plans to send the exhibition to universities and schools all over the country, to ensure that this "unlikely" story is one that isn't forgotten.</p> <p> </p>

Please enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below: